Field of Invention
The present teaching provides a variety of methods, systems and architectures for remote computer screen sharing. In one presentation sharing embodiment, images of a presenter's computer screen are captured and transmitted for display over a communications network, such as the Internet, to one or more viewers, where both the presenter and viewer(s) use web-browsers to access and view the content.
Description of Related Art
Often it is useful for a presenter to broadcast the contents of their computer screen over a network to remote viewers, such as to demonstrate the capabilities of a software product or website. Several commercial solutions, such as WebEx™ and GoToMyPC™, offer screen sharing related products. Although useful, in these sharing products the presenters must download and install software (such as executables or plug-ins) to the presentation computer, while the viewer must complete a time-consuming setup process, which can include software downloads and email-based invitation setup process, to connect the viewer to the presenter. These limitations prevent the usage in certain situations, such as a sales call and limit the devices upon which it can run. Additionally screen sharing solutions often require significant bandwidth to send a full video of the presenters screen and can often result in slow updates or momentary screen freezes for the viewers, and can not work at all over slower network connections. Further, screen sharing is not ideal for showing video or animations (due to a much slower update rate), quickly showing image slides, or allowing remote users to interact directly with webpages. As such, presenters often need a solution that allows them to quickly switch between display modes, where screen sharing is only one of several types of supported modes. Thus, solutions which only offer screen sharing are not sufficient for all a customers needs.